The Revisionist Fabrication of the Myth of an Original Treblinka "Steam Narrative" (Part C)

Part C. Rabinowitz, Krzepicki . . . and the burden of the early reports on Treblinka

In this short series examining Jansson's case for a "Treblinka steam narrative," we've looked so far in depth at two of Jansson's key witnesses, Jacob Rabinowicz and Abraham Krzepicki. In this concluding section we will broaden our view to the range of early testimonies and reports about Treblinka and draw some conclusions about these early reports on mass murder at Treblinka and the viability of the revisionist claim that they show early witnesses and observers settling on murder by means of steam.

Of course, the aim is not to “neutralize” a so-called “steam chamber” report but to understand that report in context. The context does not reduce to Rabinowicz and Krzepicki, neither of whom, nor taken together, are useful to supporting Jansson’s case for a dominant “steam narrative.” Nor does the context reduce to reports of steam, as Jansson tries to have it by stacking the deck. As we will see, during July-October 1942, thinking in Warsaw ghetto about the method of killing at Treblinka gravitated toward gas but was characterized most of all by uncertainty. That uncertainty in turn was due to at least two factors.

First, few of the witnesses reporting on what was happening to Jews at Treblinka were in a position to observe directly the method of death; as Krzepicki explained, even workers who extracted corpses from the murder installation were unable to say exactly how the victims had been murdered. And most reports about the killing came from escapees or others who were not nearly as close to the murder process as corpse handlers.

Second – and this is why I’ve stressed that the Wasser-Gutkowski-Ringelblum report is not aptly described as “the steam chambers report,” a description which is itself wholly polemical – the Jewish activists had more immediate concerns, and thus points of focus, than the precise manner by which their family members, friends, and neighbors were being murdered. The reports of this time pay a great deal of attention to very basic issues: where were deportees taken, would there be further deportations and when, were different parts of the Jewish population to be treated differently by the Germans and were there strategies for escaping deportation, how did Jews fare where they were taken and was there truth to what the Germans stated, what tactics did the Germans use in rounding up and deporting Jews, what kind of force did the Germans apply, and so on. These were urgent questions – perhaps questions of life and death. Method of death, once activists had determined that in fact deportees were being subjected to murder, was one among many urgent questions – and, judging from the extant reports, not the most urgent.

Jansson has written that his intent is to trace “the genealogy of Treblinka extermination stories,” by which he means, I take it, reports and testimonies. His flawed treatment of Rabinowicz and Krzepicki doesn’t help build this kind of understanding, nor does his grab-bag of latter-day steam references[73] in part IIb of his “memo.” In part IIb Jansson lists various reports on reports echoing steam, without attention to origins and relationships among the documents – quite the opposite of the genealogy he calls for. Notably in his eagerness to list echoes of steam, Jansson seems to have entirely forgotten about a series of important reports on the camp, notably those by Grossman,[74] Auerbach[75], Łukaszkiewicz [76], and Muszkat[77], all of these reporting concluding that the Treblinka's victims were mostly killed in gas chambers.

1. An understanding of the reports of Treblinka escapees from summer-fall 1942 is the first building block of a useful genealogy of information about the camp. Below is a simple table listing in chronological order (based on date of escape) Treblinka escapees from this period – and who gave testimonies of the camp through the end of 1942. Table 1 below shows what each testimony reported about the method of killing at Treblinka.

This tabulation does not include additional contemporary references to information about the camp – references like those in Lewin’s diary (a rumor about a “crematorium near Sokolow and Malkinia”; Natan Smolar’s phone call – those deported are "deported to Tr., are going to their 'death’”; a report from a Jew named Slawa that deported Jews were being taken to a barracks and, after “heart-rending screaming” could be heard, they fell silent – with references to “horribly swollen” corpses and prisoner-gravediggers who were killed after a day of work)[78] or what the Polish underground publication Information Bulletin reported about Treblinka (e.g., in September that Jews were being murdered with gas from “an internal combustion engine” in a bath-house[79] and in October that the murder operations at Treblinka had resumed and utilized “exhaust gases”[80]). In fact, the Delegatura, in reporting on Treblinka, mentioned gassing repeatedly (see below).

Even a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, recorded a sketchy report about gassing at Treblinka by September 1942.[81] Finally, Jansson ignores that the reports of “steam” all come from escapees who fled the camp early on – indicating that an erroneous explanation from early in Treblinka’s history was picked up during August-early September 1942 but over time replaced with better information. An example for this is the 1947 testimony of Joseph Gutman[82]; Gutman in 1947 was still reporting steam as the murder method – but he escaped Treblinka in August 1942.

As we will see below, the testimonies from those who were in the camp after this early period – like Strawczynski, Wiernik, Rajchman and many others – nearly all state that killing was done by means of gas.

What emerges from the body of these testimonies is the following:

The witnesses gave remarkably similar accounts of the arrival process, with victims herded through the reception camp through the “chute” to the bath-house – and of how corpses were removed from the death chambers and disposed of; these parts of the process were its most visible elements

There is no dominant “steam” narrative but rather a great deal of uncertainty along with a bias toward gas as the method of killing, the part of the process which witnesses were unable to observe directly

The uncertainty and conjecture in the early reports comes from the lack of first-hand observation of how the killing chambers worked; there is not a single confirmed testimony that comes directly from workers assigned to the upper (death) camp while it was in operation[92]

As a result, the two most formal and complete reports – the Bund’s and the Oyneg Shabes – diverged on the methods used to murder deported Jews – and the Bund’s report gave two possible methods

Some of the witnesses themselves were uncertain and had difficulty settling on an answer to the question how their fellow Jews were being put to death

Even so, with most witnesses not recorded as stating a method of killing and with more testimonies saying gas than steam (or electricity[93] or mobile chambers), Jansson argues that the predominant narrative during these “formative” months explained the method of killing as steam.[94]

2. Out of 83 Treblinka testimonies from camp survivors, I have been able to identify references to method of death in about half (number=43).[95]

(Mattogno & Graf also cite a report describing the killing method as steam; this was in a report sent to London in March 1943 but the information was not attributed to a particular escapee, an underground source or other informant.)

Every single report of “steam” killings comes from the pre-Stangl period in the camp, that is, from a Jew deported to the camp during July and August 1942. The witnesses show a good deal of variation, two of them mentioning multiple methods, during this time. Looking at reports from prisoners from this period, ignoring escape date, we see that 2 mentioned both gas and steam (Krzepicki, Rabinowicz), 1 mentioned steam (Gutman), the Bund report mentioned gas and electricity, and 5 witnesses didn't say.

Conversely, none of the “eyewitness” reports in the sample for those brought to Treblinka after August 1942 mentioned steam as the method of killing. Escapees from the camp from September 1942 onwards generally identified gas chambers as where the murders occurred.[96] The only mention of steam made after fall-winter 1942 in the sample came from Gutman, an August 1942 escapee, in his 1947 testimony.

Every prisoner in the sample who escaped during the revolt in August 1943 and who mentioned a killing method (sample=29) referred to gas chambers; every prisoner in the sample who was assigned to the upper, or death, camp (sample=10, excluding Krzepicki from the sample) gave gas chambers as the method of killing.

The obvious conclusion is that “steam murder” circulated as a rumor only during the chaotic Eberl period, in the opening weeks of Treblinka’s existence, when workers from the work squads were routinely executed in selections. As prisoners gained experience in the camp, and Kommando membership stabilized, the means of killing became clearer to prisoners and rumors were tamped down.

Jansson's "case" for a dominant “steam” narrative ignores the overwhelming number of testimonies from both the early and later periods citing gas chambers – 41 of the 42 witnesses whom I had in my sample mentioned gas chamber murders. The data contradict his "theory": the idea that the "steam narrative" came from an organized effort to promote a contrived and false story, and accounts for the "steam" references scotched by so many "gas" testimonies- given in spite of the first fleeting thoughts some had about killing in the camp. The "gas" testimonies came not in contradiction to contemporary views of life and death in the camp but were one way the supposed myth-promoters clarified what was happening.

A better interpretation of these data is obvious: during August-October the ghetto activists were trying, without uniform success, to utilize uncertain and contradictory reports about how Jews were being killed. At the same time, they were reaching other urgent conclusions: the trains taking Jews from Warsaw were going to a camp at Treblinka (in itself, this was a significant discovery), the Jews taken to Treblinka were being killed en masse immediately after arriving - with very few survivors, the Germans used a combination of reassuring words and force to process the deported Jews, a deportee’s fate was not dependent on whether he or she went voluntarily or by force, women and men alike were killed but after being separated, the killing took place in the upper part of the camp in so-called “bath-houses,” many of the small number of surviving Jews were involved in work emptying the death chambers, in mass burials of corpses and in cremations whilst others worked in the reception area of the camp processing goods taken from arriving Jews, and so on.

3. There is one more serious problem with Jansson's claim to an ur-steam narrative for mass murder in Treblinka, which concerns reports on the camp made by the Polish underground during 1942. A sampling of such reports follows:

30 July 1942 Biuletyn Informacyjny: lack of specifics on fate of deportees with the “most pessimistic speculations”[97]

6 August 1942 Biuletyn Informacyjny: so far, nearly 70,000 Jews deported from Warsaw; “While precise details and certainty is still being determined, first-hand accounts give no doubt that the transports of Jews are being directed via routes towards two main death camps in Bełzec and Sobibór.”[98] [About this time the Bund mission, which discovered that the deportations went to Treblinka and heard that the killing was by gas or electricity, was completed and 1st Bund report was published in underground newspaper in Warsaw.]

10 August 1942 Home Army’s Jewish Affairs Bureau: Henryk Woliński (bureau chief) 150,000 Jews deported from Warsaw (7,000 per day), Treblinka II had been added to Sobibór and Bełzec death camps; also liquidation of Radom[99]

17 August 1942 Informacja Bieżaca: “After the departure of the steam engines, the Jews are forced to undress, supposedly for the bath; then they are led into the gas chamber and executed. . . . the gas chamber is mobile and moves back and forth over the pits . . .”[100]

18 August 1942, analysis of Department of Information (division of Home Army’s Bureau of Information and Propaganda): report on Warsaw deportations; “The physical liquidation of the Jewish people that has been taking place for the last few months . . .”[101]

20 August 1942 Biuletyn Informacyjny: approximately 200,000 Jews deported to Treblinka; Jews being put to death in Treblinka, in “gas chambers”[102]

Probably late August 1942, Department of Information and Press, Delegatura, report covering 16 July - 25 August 1942): “more and more intelligence about the cruel murder of the Jews by the Germans in every area of Poland,” citing specifically Bełzec, Sobibór, Treblinka, camps in which Jews were being murdered “in gas chambers specifically built for this purpose”; Radom cited[103]

31 August 1942, letter by Leon Feiner to Zygielbojm, Polish government in London: “the complete extermination” of the Jews underway, “un-heard of mass murders” in occupied USSR now extended into General Gouvernement in ongoing actions – 1,250,000 Jews murdered in Bełzec, Sobibór, Treblinka[104]

8 September 1942 Informacja Bieżaca: “The Ukrainians pull the Jews out of the cars and lead them to the ‘bath’ in the bathhouse. This is a building surrounded by barbed wire. They enter in groups of 300 to 500 persons. Each group is immediately locked up hermetically and gassed. Of course, this gas is not immediately effective, for the Jews have to walk to the pits afterwards.”[105]

17 September 1942 declaration on Warsaw ghetto liquidation issued by the Polish Underground’s Directorate of Civil Resistance, Delegator, printed in Biuletyn Informacyjny: “Jews who, for no reason other than the fact that they belong to the Jewish nation, are mercilessly slaughtered by poison gas, by being burned alive, thrown out of windows . . .” (no specific reference to Treblinka listed in Zimmerman’s summary)[106]

1 October 1942 Biuletyn Informacyjny: “Death camps in Bełzec, Treblinka and Sobibór are working day and night. In Radom only about 7% of the Jewish community remains. About 1000 people were shot on the spot and the remaining 22,000 deported to Treblinka. In Kielce, the entire ghetto was liquidated in a single night (Aug. 19th) with 1200 shot on the spot and 16,000 deported. . . .”[107]

5 October 1942 Informacja Bieżaca: “Treblinka. The death camp is once more in operation. . . . The gas chambers function as follows: Outside of the barracks is a 20 HP internal combustion engine, which is in operation around the clock. The end of its exhaust pipe is mounted in a wall of the barracks; the exhaust gases, with the admixture of toxic fluids, which have been specially mixed into the fuel of the engine, kill the people locked up in the barracks . . .”[108]

10 October 1942 situational report of the Delegatura: conclusion that “resettlement to the east” was a euphemism for mass murder; deportees from Polish ghettos being sent to Bełzec and Treblinka and there “being subjected to horrific mass murder in gas chambers”[110]

1-15 October 1942 Niepodleglosć: on mass murder of Warsaw’s Jews, about 300,000 murdered, according to Zimmerman, mostly by gas[111]

No date, report forwarded to Polish government in exile in London: “[The Jews] are brought into a sealed chamber, a barrack, approximately 100 people at a time. Outside of the barrack stands an internal combustion engine of 20 HP, which runs around the clock. The mouth of the engine’s exhaust leads through the barrack’s wall, and the people locked up in the barrack are killed by exhaust gases channeled through it that contain toxic fluid additives, which have been especially mixed with the engine fuel.”[112]

The point here is not the accuracy of these reports – they contained inaccurate as well as accurate information – but of course their overwhelming "gas chamber narrative." It is incomprehensible how Jansson hopes to fabricate a "steam narrative" against the burden of so many reports saying the opposite right from the outset. What is inescapable, however, is why Jansson decided to give scant mention of these Polish reports about the early days of Treblinka death camp. It becomes clear, from the various sources, that escapees from Treblinka, and others who were aware of the camp, did not know how those taken to the "bathhouses" were being murdered inside. The SS did not give informational tours or provide handy brochures. So people working in the camp made conjectures, compared observations, thoughts, and rumors, and eventually formed a consensus that engine exhaust was the means of murder.

Along with these rather numerous reports, all undermining Jansson's attempt to create a "Treblinka steam narrative," are other "gas" sources like perpetrator testimonies, for example, the 1950 interrogation, conducted by "Senior Lieutenant Yevstigneyev, Senior Investigator of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukraine, Voroshilovgrad Region," of Dmitriy Nikolayevich Korotkikh, a Ukrainian Trawniki stationed at Treblinka. In his statement to Yevstigneyev, Korotkikh said that "Mass extermination of Jews in special gas chambers took place in this camp" and even discussed the addition of the new gas chambers to the three original chambers.[114]

4. But why did the official Oyneg Shabes report opt for the “steam” explanation while some Oyneg Shabes leaders like M.M. Kon (whose informants were “grave-diggers”[115]) and the Bund leadership did not? Given the uncertainty and the difficulties of observation, steam isn’t a far-fetched guess. Recall that Krzepicki’s short testimony explained that even the workers in the upper camp weren’t able to observe enough of the exact process of murder to know how it was carried out. The Germans created an expectation around showers with their reception speeches and labeling of the gas chambers as “bath-houses.” The Germans seemed to have been able to orient the victims toward thinking of “showers” – yet people were being killed and fumes were likely seen: a leap to steam is not a very big one under the circumstances: “What’s going on in there? It’s not water, the people are dying – they must be heating the water and killing them with steam.” This is really not so mysterious – not when we have Peretz Opoczynski, another member of Oyneg Shabes (a transplant from Lodz noted for his reportage), speculating in October about a giant electric chair.[116] Confronted with extreme situations, with unusual violence or shocking surprise, people can be expected to speculate and reach for explanations, even where they are not obvious.

Despite Jansson’s best efforts to twist the facts, “steam” testimonies simply do not predominate in the early reports. Jansson creates an appearance of “steam” in part by ignoring important, contradictory testimonies (as listed in the table above). He seems surprised to discover that Auerbach and another leading Oyneg Shabes figure, Adolf Berman, promoted the very views expressed in their organization’s major report! Jansson even claims that Polish Home Army bulletin, released shortly after the deportations began, inevitably reported “a story of killing” – Jansson himself writing tautologically of the deportees as “resettlers” despite the lack of evidence for their resettlement. Jansson seems incapable of considering that the reason for the Home Army report’s conclusions about murder might not have been a “given” at all but would have come from alarming reports reaching the underground’s agents. Jansson characterizes the few contrary references he admits to as, on their face, the result of embarrassment over the so-called steam story. At the same time, Jansson fails even to mention significant later eyewitness reports that leave no question that their authors concluded that the murders at Treblinka occurred by means of gas – summarized above but notably Jankiel Wiernik[117] and Oscar Strawczynski[118] (also Chil Rajchman,[119] Richard Glazar,[120] and others) – or similar reports like the 1943 “Plotnicka letter”[121].

Jansson brushes aside the efforts of Jews and Poles to understand what was becoming of deportees as a propaganda contrivance rather than the result of the need and desire to know: “What killing method would be claimed took some time to determine.” It is rather that, as one would expect, it took some time even for Jews kept alive in the camp to determine exactly what was going on behind the walls of the gas chambers. The few "steam" reports were part of the process - and helped confirm that Jews were being murdered in the camp.

The realistic alternative to the sort of conspiracy thinking in which Jansson is trapped is to consider the situation in which Warsaw’s Jewish community found itself, what sources of information and tools were available to community members, and how those threatened with deportation and death proceeded, and with what degree of success; consideration of all such factors helps us understand the situation of Jews in Poland during 1942 and to frame their responses in a meaningful way.

But let’s conclude with a point of agreement with Jansson: an interest in a fully worked-out genealogy of the understanding and concepts of the Einsatz Reinhard camps. Only let that genealogy embrace the full nature of the early reports about the Treblinka camp and the rather rapid agreement of escapee and survivor testimony on the murder of Jews there in gas chambers.

_________________________________________

[73] A good example of the shoddiness of Jansson’s deck-stacking of “steam” references is his inclusion on his list of “a December 1942 poem written in the Warsaw ghetto”; Jansson is careful to omit mention of poems by Warsaw ghetto poet Wladyslaw Szlengl that refer to gassing. Kassow, for example, discusses Szlengl’s poem “Reckoning with God,” which includes a garbled reference to the fate of the Jews: “When I go under the Prussian gas” (p 319). In his poem “Little Station Treblinka,” Szlengl was more explicit about Treblinka: “Here you cook with gas,” he wrote (quoted in Perochodnik, p 50).

[76] Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz, a judge who was a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland, published on the basis of his findings in 1946 in an article "Obóz zagłady Treblinka" (The Extermination Camp Treblinka) and in a book Obóz straceń w Treblince.

[80] Quoted in Mattogno and Graf, p 47 (report dated 5 October 1942). Mattogno and Graf also quote from a Polish underground report of 17 August 1942 (pp 48, 116) which surmised that Jews were being gassed at Treblinka “the gas chamber is mobile”; like other early reports, the August and October reports quoted here by Mattogno and Graf refer to the pits for corpse disposal at the camp. Note that the earlier, August report contains the reference to mobile barracks whilst the report from the following months do not. These 1942 Home Army reports are also cited here; along with other reports mentioning gassings in the camp (notably Information Bulletin for 23 October 1942).

[85] Nowodworski gave an account (AR II/296, see Shapiro and Epsztein, p 394, dated 28 August 1942) that was described by Lewin in his diary. There Lewin noted that on 28 August 1942 “we had a long talk with Dowid Nowodworski, who returned from Treblinka. He gave us the complete story of the sufferings that he endured from the first moment that he was seized to the escape from the death-camp and up to his return to Warsaw. His words confirm once again and leave no room for doubt that all the deportees, both those who have been seized and those who reported voluntarily, are taken to be killed and that no one is saved.” The diary mentions the Radom and Siedlce actions and describes Nowodworski’s account as a “testimony of stark anguish.” Lewin also notes that he and others took Nowodworski’s testimony. Lewin, p 170. This diary entry shows the primacy which Oyneg Shabes collaborators gave to discovery of the purpose of the deportations and the fate of the deportees – what the Germans intended and their “rules of engagement” – over matters such as manner of death. As we will see, during August and September Lewin became aware of other escapees and what they reported, and he participated as discussed above in the extensive Oyneg Shabes interview of Jakob Rabinowicz.

[91] Shapiro and Epsztein, p 394; the author of this report, a Treblinka escapee, was from Czestochowa and, upon escaping, made his way to Warsaw ghetto where he provided testimony including “4 sketches of map of the camp in Treblinka (with explanations).” He also made reference to "

komory smierci" without specifying a method of killing.

[92] Menahem (Mendel) Kon, in his diary, and Abraham Krzepicki, in his testimonies, referred to gravediggers at Treblinka. In Kon’s case, the reference was to his source for information about the camp and gas chambers – gravediggers who’d been able to escape the camp – but is not specific as to where in the camp the informants worked; Krzepicki, as we’ve seen, specified that the gravediggers were not burying gassing victims – thus implying that they worked in other parts of the camp than near the gas chambers. Other references to gravediggers were made by Lewin (mentioned by the unnamed escapee referenced in the diary entry for 21 September) and Ringelblum (“the news about the gravediggers” adding parenthetically and elliptically “Rabinowicz, Jacob”; “the Jewish gravediggers with yellow patches on their knees,” likely a conflation of the Jews performing craft-labor in the lower camp – as mentioned by Krzepicki and Wiernik – with gravediggers); these references fail to point to a specific location at which the prisoners worked but suggest the lower, not death, camp.

[93] A colleague has brought to my attention a “secondhand” report of a meeting with a purported Treblinka escapee from Kielce that mentioned electricity, the misinformation presumably coming from “inside the camp.” This colleague points out that other electricity reports could have been hearsay swirling around the surrounding countryside. The influence of prior hearsay based on erroneous reports about Bełzec is certain.

[94] This blog post was prepared for time reasons without access to the originals of important Kon and Puterman documents to ascertain exactly how the method of killing was stated.

[95] I offer this tentative analysis despite certain limitations, such as my inability to consult archives for original and full testimonies, data available to me for only about half the testimonies I've listed, use of English language and excerpted versions of testimonies, and reliance on a variety of secondary sources for information as to method of murder identified in most of the testimonies. A small number of survivors (e.g., Krzepicki, Nowodworski, Rabinowicz) gave multiple testimonies, each of which was included in the survey. In this survey also counted were cases of unnamed escapees cited in diaries or other writings. A more complete survey and refinement of these data are needed but beyond the scope of this reply.

[96] Stanislaw Kon, Szymon Goldberg, and Samuel Rajzman believed that the killings were effected in two steps – first by pumping air out of the chambers, then by pumping gas in. Goldberg noted, “Then there was also chlorine” (Mattogno & Graf, Treblinka, p 67).

[114]Found here; there is a 1943 Soviet reference by I. Sergeeva in Pravda to killing at Treblinka by means of "steam," this reference reliant on information from Polish underground radio, thus out of sync with the vast majority of Polish underground reports on the camp (Karel C. Berkhoff, "'Total Annihilation of the Jewish Population': The Holocaust in the Soviet Media, 1941-45," in Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and Alexander M. Martin, eds., The Holocaust in the East: Local Perpetrators and Soviet Responses (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), p 106

[119] Rajchman’s memoir, published in English as The Last Jew of Treblinka, (New York: Pegasus Books / W.W. Norton, 2011), was written during 1944-1945, most of it while in hiding as the Soviets advanced toward Germany.

"As we will see, during July-October 1942, thinking in Warsaw ghetto about the method of killing at Treblinka gravitated toward gas but was characterized most of all by uncertainty. That uncertainty in turn was due to at least two factors."

Aha, so they basically didn't know what happened! What an admission!

"First, few of the witnesses reporting on what was happening to Jews at Treblinka were in a position to observe directly the method of death; as Krzepicki explained, even workers who extracted corpses from the murder installation were unable to say exactly how the victims had been murdered"

Isolating the killing method from everything else that was being reported is not an honest way of evaluating the sources or assessing the extent of knowledge. You don't get to dismiss evidence just because it suits you.

Polish railway workers and the underground reported early on that transports from Warsaw stopped at Treblinka and were unloaded there. These reports reached the Warsaw ghetto, the inhabitants did not have freedom of movement so were inevitably dependent on such reports.Polish and Jewish informants did not need to step inside the camp and see the gas chambers to arrive at the conclusion that Treblinka was a site of mass murder. This conclusion was reinforced by the accounts of those living or working in close proximity to the camp, reaching the Polish underground as well as emissaries from the ghetto sent out to try and find out what was happening to the deportees.

Every single source pointed to Treblinka as the end destination and as a site where Jews were being killed. No source whatsoever points to transfers onwards via Treblinka at this time. Not one.

This fact is why fussing over what could be seen from what vantage point inside the camp is basically BS, and why 'revisionism' is pointless. We could have zero survivors from inside the camp and Treblinka would still be a death camp.

Inside the camp, there were two sections. Jewish workers selected to sort clothing and other tasks in the lower camp did not have line of sight to the gas chambers in the death camp. But they did see transport after transport arriving, they witnessed shootings of new arrivals (for resistance and non-compliance or at the 'Lazarett'), and they could observe new arrivals being ordered to undress, and forced through the 'tunnel' into the death camp area, and they could hear the screams of the dying.

Witnesses who spent substantial time in the death camp area did not escape until 1943 during the revolt. Escaping from the death camp area was harder. Escapes from the outer camp area were easier in the summer of 1942 and became harder after Eberl was replaced as commandant by Stangl.

Escapees from the outer camp area are still eyewitnesses to a great deal of what happened at Treblinka. They could see enough to know that the arrivals at the camp were being killed there. But on the specific issue of exactly how the victims were killed, not having direct line of sight meant they could not be certain of the method.

This is why there were distorted reports in the early phase, such as steam - as Statistical Mechanic has shown.

SM's series is about the early reports, which are already due to their nature (hearsay, incomplete information) not as technical reliable as testimonies of eyewitness in good position, which were - again due to their nature - only obtained later (I'm mean you get it that the Germans did not let some journalists and neutral or Allied investigators into the death camps during their operation to interview and interrogate the people?)

If you are looking for "real Eye witnesses" you have to check out the latter. Some of those you can find e.g. here:

Thank you for your reply to what I wrote on Jansson’s argument about steam.

In addition to Nick’s and Hans's comments, I have to add that yours just doesn’t really address what I wrote about - and it doesn't make much sense. First, you seem to think that I’ve “admitted” something. No, I simply followed the evidence. Said what the evidence shows. Taken as a group, the prisoners who left these early testimonies determined, if you read the whole blog entry, "what" was happening and where - but not exactly ”how." They didn’t have full details - but this is true of many witnesses in many situations. And it isn’t from this small number of witnesses, in any event, that we can prove that mass murder took place at Trebinka - there is a lot more evidence about the mass murder, of many different types and from many more sources, some of which Nick and Hans alluded to in their replies to your comment.

You forget that the point of my discussion was that, using the very witnesses whom Jansson claims prove a “steam narrative,” it can be shown that there was no steam narrative at all. You seem to concede this point. Which was what I set out to show.

Now, once we have that out of the way, we go on to the diversity of other evidence for mass murder in the Einsatz Reinhard camps. Which is not what I focused on here. But the HC blog and of course the White Paper have dealt with this extensively.

Last, your remark on "real eyewitnesses" "of murder" ignores both the reality of what I described and what an eyewitness is: what is it you think the witnesses you mention observed? The prisoners working in the camp - lower and upper camp - observed that the SS led Jews to the gas chambers, then the upper camp crews had 1000s of corpses they were forced to deal with, emptying gas chambers, burying and burning bodies - of these prisoners working closer to the murders, Krzepicki said even they couldn’t see the exact process by which people were being turned into corpses. So, do you imagine that these people had walked to the chambers of their own volition and in large groups simultaneously expired there on their own? You do realize that if a number of people observe elements of a single murder, each is an eyewitness, whether or not each saw all the elements of the murder. You need, if you want to challenge mass murder, to say something not about some missing detail but about 1000s of corpses - the mass graves and corpses, for example, Krzepicki observed.

Later than August/September 1942 - recall that I focused on just a small group of early escapees - prisoners like Wiernik, who observed the process first hand, gave more detailed descriptions of more of the process. It is interesting that the testimonies of the 1943 escapees mention gas over and over, wherever they worked in the camp.

bhigr:"As we will see, during July-October 1942, thinking in Warsaw ghetto about the method of killing at Treblinka gravitated toward gas but was characterized most of all by uncertainty. That uncertainty in turn was due to at least two factors."

Aha, so they basically didn't know what happened! What an admission!

I can't believe I actually read this. So, people at one place with limited access to outside information are unsure as to specific details as to how people are being killed at another place is a "big deal"?

I wonder if Bhigr is the legendary (for all the wrong reasons) ``Monstrous`` of SSF fame. Both are incredibly, comically thick, both frequently misinterpret quotes form eyewitnesses, both are incapable of not missing the point, and both are liable to cheer for the own-goals thay have scored.

"You forget that the point of my discussion was that, using the very witnesses whom Jansson claims prove a “steam narrative,” it can be shown that there was no steam narrative at all. You seem to concede this point. Which was what I set out to show."

Oh so that was your point? Some witnesses Talked about steam chambres, that's a narrative!, But there was no steam narrative?

Thank you for your reply to what I wrote on Jansson’s argument about steam.

I did assume in my blog item that readers would have a basic familiarity with the Treblinka source material and that they would have read, or would read, Jansson’s piece.

I also assumed that people commenting here would have read the blog piece I wrote.

You seem to have missed the boat on all three assumptions.

You say, “Oh so that was your point? Some witnesses Talked about steam chambres, that's a narrative!, But there was no steam narrative?”

No, my point was not that “Some witnesses Talked about steam chambres” and that “that’s a narrative.” My point was that Jansson misread a number of early witness testimonies, ignored witness testimonies that don’t fit his claim, and misrepresented written reports about Treblinka in order to fabricate the creation of a narrative, which he said is evident in witness reports and reports of the Jewish underground and the Allies, about Treblinka in which “steam chambers” are a core part. I explained this, of course, in the blog article. In reply to your silly nonsense on witnessing in your earlier comment, I reiterated that the early witnesses you alluded to don’t support Jansson’s case. Jon Harrison has just made a comment, too, explaining again that the war-time testimonies and reports about the Treblinka camp, taken as a whole, don't lead to a conclusion that Jews were killed at Treblinka in steam chambers. Perhaps if the point is repeated enough times you will grasp it.

You also write, “Narrative: spoken or written account of connected Events, story!” Ok, but so what? My criticism was directed at Jansson’s misuse of the witness testimonies and early reports to assert that “steam chambers” were dominant in the “shaping of the Treblinka story.” I disagreed, and your first comment showed that you don’t think Jansson is right either.

Oh, “story” is Jansson’s word, I used “narrative” - and you seem to concur with me that the two are synonymous and thus narrative is an appropriate way to describe what Jansson thinks the activists and allies created.

Other than demonstrating the impotent frustration that comes with defending the indefensible, I am not sure what you’re trying to accomplish here.

@bhigr:Do you think the SS conducted tours?Allowed the locals to wander about the grounds? Took the Jews on aerial tours to see the layout? Handed out brochures detailing the gassing procedure?Granted, security wasn't as tight as it should be but that was Eberl's incompetence, not regular procedure.

"You forget that the point of my discussion was that, using the very witnesses whom Jansson claims prove a “steam narrative,” it can be shown that there was no steam narrative at all."

"No, my point was not that “Some witnesses Talked about steam chambres” and that “that’s a narrative.” My point was that Jansson misread a number of early witness testimonies, ignored witness testimonies that don’t fit his claim, and misrepresented written reports about Treblinka in order to fabricate the creation of a narrative, which he said is evident in witness reports and reports of the Jewish underground and the Allies, about Treblinka in which “steam chambers” are a core part."

So once you have been proven wrong, you change the "point". This reminds me of our initial discussion about what you were trying to prove by your publication. You declined to answer. I now know why!

"...even workers who extracted corpses from the murder installation were unable to say exactly how the victims had been murdered"

That's understandable. But, they should have been capable of describing how the corpses looked like! The appearance of a steamed corpse should differ considerably from the appearance of a corpse killed with carbon monoxide.

"One classic sign of carbon monoxide poisoning is more often seen in the dead rather than the living – people have been described as looking red-cheeked and healthy (see below). However, since this "cherry-red" appearance is common only in the deceased, and is unusual in living people, it is not considered a useful diagnostic sign in clinical medicine. In pathological (autopsy) examination the ruddy appearance of carbon monoxide poisoning is notable because unembalmed dead persons are normally bluish and pale, whereas dead carbon-monoxide poisoned persons may simply appear unusually lifelike in coloration.[30][31][32] The colorant effect of carbon monoxide in such postmortem circumstances is thus analogous to its use as a red colorant in the commercial meat-packing industry."

Fuck this guy. The whole "Cherry red" bs has been beaten to death on various forums. It's been pointed out countless times that the cherry red symptom doesn't occur if a person is anemic. The pictures Friedrich Berg of all people shared don't even look too different from normal people.

Your wrote, "So once you have been proven wrong, you change the point' This reminds me of our initial discussion about what you were trying to prove by your publication. You declined to answer. I now know why!"

I have no idea why you think I've been "proven wrong" (certainly not by any of your rather obtuse comments) - or why you say I "change the point": the point of what I wrote has been from the outset what I explained to you after you kept failing to comprehend what I and others have tried to tell you.

As to my declining to answer your question about what I was trying to prove, I did answer you. And I told you that it should be clear from the piece itself, if you'd only have the patience to read it.

You are really not making much sense as you keep going with this. You also write, "That's understandable. But, they should have been capable of describing how the corpses looked like! The appearance of a steamed corpse should differ considerably from the appearance of a corpse killed with carbon monoxide.'

Why on god's green earth should we expect workers under the conditions that existed in the corpse disposal teams at the camp 1) to know the various signs of different kinds of poisoning (and, if you think they did, please recall that by far most of the witnesses reported murder by engine exhaust, not steam) or 2) to be asked, or to provide, details on the coloration of the corpses they handled? The exact exchanges between the crews mentioned by Krzepicki and Ringelblum are just more that we don't have good knowledge of.

The truth is that during each individual gassing operation the victims would die either of carbon monoxide poisoning *or* of simple suffocation (or some in the group of the former and the others in the same group of the latter). To see why this is so make a simple calculation of how fast people would die of suffocation/CO2 (sic) poisoning in a closed room. The formulas are available online. Take, say, 600 people and an average gas chamber volume, plug in the numbers and see how fast they would have died even without the engine.

That is, whether each particular individual died of CO or CO2 poisoning (and thus the corpse color) would depend on many factors, such as how large the group was, was the individual among the first in the chamber or among the last, how long the loading process in this case was, etc., etc. Dr. Pfannenstiel, for example, witnessed corpses with a bluish tint - which meant that they simply suffocated regardless of the engine. Smaller groups, on the other hand, would be likely to die from CO poisoning.

And of course, the color is just an excuse. There is a '44 gas van testimony by Pilunov who describes red color of the gas vans victims. Will that mean that the deniers will accept his testimony? Of course not. "No gassings" is an article of religious faith.

Mobile gas vans had originally been developed during the Nazi search for more effective ways of murdering Jews in the Soviet Union. Before the vans were deployed in the occupied east, however, the KTI had tested them inside Germany in autumn 1941. The location of these lethal tests was Sachsenhausen, and the victims were Soviet POWs, who were gassed instead of being shot. Camp SS men would force the naked prisoners into the van, customized to pump carbon monoxide from the engine into the hold. Then the van drove off. When it came to a stop outside the Sachsenhausen crematorium, all prisoners inside were dead, their bodies turned pink by the fumes. 175

Source:Nikolaus Wachsman, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps

I attempted to pull the footnote, however, the Kindle version does not break this down. However, if anyone has a hardback copy that note should correspond to the footnotes at the end.

Further on corpse color, the gambit relies on a very narrow, as Sergey Romanov says, definition of what the prisoners should have, according to deniers, seen and recalled - a definition that ignores many factors we know about. Sergey also reiterates the well-known point that the victims died in the chambers from from CO or asphyxiation; many victims were malnourished and anemic; and most arrived at Treblinka in a state of dehydration from long train rides during which little water for them had been provided. Further, the corpses handled by the prisoners were described as packed tightly together, tangled as though they’d struggled or fought, “horribly deformed,” bloated or swollen, smeared and discolored by bodily fluids, the skin slack and even shredding off them. The tasks were repellent and offensive - even to people who’d endured the hardships imposed on them by the Nazis in Warsaw ghetto; removing the corpses, pulling gold from their mouths, burying or burning the people who’d died horribly was gruesome work. These workers labored under extreme conditions.The prisoners also reported being whipped, shouted at, and beaten by the supervisors under whom they worked and being under constant pressure to speed up. “Impeaching” these witnesses for noticing some factors but not all of them is disingenuous to the nth degree.

I agree.The fact that the color of corpses isn't always known is irrelevant and frankly an odd thing to focus on.What is more telling to me is that deniers have no basis for their "transit camp" theory. Because of this they fixate on odd details (steam or electric chambers, corpse color) and blow those details out of proportion.When the core agreement among the available early witnesses, that these were death camps and not transit camps, that is the relevant factor, not the disagreement over the killing agent.

The immediate discoloration would only be present in a fraction of the corpses due to a number of factors, namely the health of the victims, the portion who simply suffocated or choked to death on the actual smoke and exhaust. I would say that only about a sixth of victims would have pink discoloration of any kind.

And that discoloration in of itself is nothing special - Eric Hunt posted a picture on rodoh of his roommate/side chick/whatever who apparently had carbon monoxide poisoning and pink discoloration. I had to put on my reading glasses and squint like a motherfucker to notice any discoloration, it was very slight and could have easily be mistaken in a rushed scenario for natural pigmentation. Treblinka sonderkommandos would not have taken particular note of it given the circumstances, especially considering that not very many would have displayed it at all.

"It's been pointed out countless times that the cherry red symptom doesn't occur if a person is anemic."

Are you implying that the Jews all suffered under Anemia and therefore noone could witness the cherry red color? How probable is that? Extremely unlikely! The vast majority of corpses should have displayed the regular signs of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The witnesses of the corpses should be capable of describing the state of the victims, in particular since it is quite astonishing that the dead should look red-cheeked and healthy.

"Why on god's green earth should we expect workers under the conditions that existed in the corpse disposal teams at the camp 1) to know the various signs of different kinds of poisoning." I don't expect the workers to know any signs of poisoning. Since the workers handled corpses, they should know what they looked like. That's all.

"or 2) to be asked, or to provide, details on the coloration of the corpses they handled?" Because the coloration is quite astonishing and clearly visible for anyone handling the corpses. A healthy looking corpse is something you won't forget in your life.

"That some witnesses didn't describe every single little detail to your satisfaction is pretty meaningless as far as history is concerned tho." I'm not talking about a small detail, I am talking about the general appearance of the corpses, the color of their skin, which is visible to anyone handling them.

"There is no requirement that witnesses had to describe the color of corpses in order to count as witnesses, especially as the color would have been different from gassing to gassing."

We are not talking about "requirements". We are trying to find out, what probably happened. That's what writing history is about. It is extremely unlikely that a person who handled dozens of corpses does not know what they more or less looked like.

Thank you for your continued interest, although you seem to have detoured us to another favored bit of denier claptrap

You write, “I don't expect the workers to know any signs of poisoning. Since the workers handled corpses, they should know what they looked like. That's all.”

You again miss the point, perhaps your continuing to do so is on purpose. The witnesses, like Krzepicki, who saw corpses did know what they looked like. Krzepiciki described the corpses of the Jews from Kielce who had been shot and 1000s of others who’d suffocated in the train cars. The details are subjective rather than detailed and clinical, and they emphasize the grotesque state of the bodies. Other bodies in the camp he saw at a distance. The reports given by others who worked with the corpses were passed along to people who eventually escaped or to members of Oyneg Shabes, who wrote down some of what they were told. The reports emphasize that people were being killed and that the corpses were in a gruesome state (swollen, etc). Other details are imply lost to us; we do not have any way of knowing what details were related but not written down, what details were observed but not related, and what details were overlooked in favor of others. And none of this Bergian pseudo-science is germane to the topic at hand or to whether 100s of 1000s of Jews were gassed at Treblinka and the other Einsatz Reinhard camps.

You write, ”Because the coloration is quite astonishing and clearly visible for anyone handling the corpses. A healthy looking corpse is something you won't forget in your life.”

Frankly, that’s your subjective view, which may or may not be contrived for this occasion. It does not take into account the many other factors involved in the situation, as already posted, and it does not take into account the nature of these early reports.

@ bhigr - Again you misunderstand. Do you practice this skill? What is subjective are your view of what people should recall and relate about corpses they see and that, under the conditions described, the foremost aspect which the corpse workers should have related was the color of the corpses.

Krzepicik - again you remind us that you have not read his long testimony, in which he describes what the corpses in the lower camp looked like.

Good question. The same question has bugged Eric “Felonious” Hunt. AFTER making his video about Treblinka, and claiming that he could prove 10s of 1000s of Jews were “transited though” the camp, it dawned on him that he actually had no more than a couple thousand, all during 1943, and already documented by the Düsseldorf Treblinka court. Poor Eric must’ve panicked, because months after releasing his video he made a desperate online plea entitle “Help! Join Team Warsaw 1942.” The plea said that “I would like to form a team to get as much new information about where did the Warsaw Jews go from July 22nd - September 21st 1942, specifically individuals talking about being transited during this time period ANYWHERE and surviving.

This is one of the perceived holes in the Revisionist case and if we can help plug it up more than has been done by Mattogno, Graf, Kues, it will do a great service to our cause. In fact if we could get enough information it'd be all over for the Treblinka hoax.”

The Cohencentration Camp webpages where Hunt posted this plea are no longer active, and we still know that the Jews deported from Warsaw, other than the 12,000 taken to the Dulag, were sent to Treblinka and nowhere else.

"What is subjective are your view of what people should recall and relate about corpses they see and that.." No this is not subjective. Please improve your reading skills. Corpses being "An unusually lifelike in coloration" is something people must be able to recognize. Just like people are able to recall the emaciated, abnormally thin, corpses from the images made in Bergen-Belsen, Dachau... What is subjetive is your wish to overlook and ignore stunning facts. You see what you want to see, but you don't get the full picture.

Krzepicki described the bodies of the Kielce shooting victims in the lower camp with counting bullet wounds or even to my best recollection mentioning the bullet wounds that would surely have been evident. Who would on this basis argue that he didn't see the bodies of people who'd been shot?

Oh, by your logic you would and you'd say the same for anyone describing in the same way the corpse of someone who'd been shot. Such an argument, dressed up as science, is so far beyond the pale of stupid that I can't believe you'd make it seriously - or similarly about victims of the gas chambers. So I can only gather that you're pulling out collective leg or that, not knowing what to say about Jansson, you're trying to reassure yourself with comforting nonsense.

But I see you trying to change the subject from "steam chambers" and Jansson's arguments.

Your attachment to this diversion is amusing. As you know we are discussing a very few reports about victims of the gas chambers that came from so called gravediggers but weren't written down verbatim or from people like Krzepicki who saw the corpses at a considerable distance. The bodies were not laid out on Dr Berg's dissecting table but smeared with extremely, fluids and dirt. The semi you are trying to drive through this rock wall is not going to make it no matter hard you press the accelerator.

Again you clearly have nothing in defense of Jansson's argument about a steam story so you're harping on a bad tangent.

"... Krzepicki who saw the corpses at a considerable distance.", which renders this witness testimony even more useless. Could he tell at all that he was looking at corpses!?

"The bodies were not laid out on Dr Berg's dissecting table,..." Are you trying to insinuate that a corpse must be laid on a dissecting table in order to recognize the color of its skin? Amusing to say the least!

@ bhigr:You wrote, "This is not even controversial. You admit yourself that several witnesses talk about steaming jews to death. There's your steam story."

But that is not what Jansson's argument is. He didn't argue that a couple testimonies mentioned steam - have you even read his piece? Again, I didn't "admit" that a few witnesses mentioned steam. It is what the evidence says. A very few against many who mentioned gassing.

You wrote: "'.. Krzepicki who saw the corpses at a considerable distance., which renders this witness testimony even more useless. Could he tell at all that he was looking at corpses!?"

Have you read Krzepicik's account. You show no signs of familiarity with it.

Your wrote: "Are you trying to insinuate that a corpse must be laid on a dissecting table in order to recognize the color of its skin? Amusing to say the least!"

No, I am telling you for the umpteenth time that the conditions of the corpse-disposal (bodies smeared with excrement, bodily fluids, dirt, observation at some distance, rushed tempo, etc - as above) are very different to what the images Berg posts on his website imply was being observed - on top of which, we simply don't know the full details of what these earlier reporters said because it was not transcribed in detail.

Again I am astonished that you are finding this useful to whatever the opaque argument is that you're trying to make.

"No, I am telling you for the umpteenth time that the conditions of the corpse-disposal..." were such that the color of the skin could not be recognized although the corpses were completely naked ... Dream on, dream on..."opaque argument" is a precise description of your own line of reasoning.

@bhigr:Please break this impasse.We could argue about corpse color and steam all day.You can prove the Holocaust is a hoax by simply proving where the Jews went after the Reinhard Camps.Surely you or some other denier can prove this?After all, coordinating the shipping of Jews wherever would leave an enormous paper trail. You need transport schedules, memos between the SS and the military coordinating their efforts, the assignment of personnel to guard these transports, the assignment of a commander or commanders of these camps or the set up of a Judenrat for ghettos.See, I've just helped you get started. Good hunting.Or, you can just admit that you have nothing and all of this arguing over steam and corpse color is just a smoke screen.Balls in your court, denier.

As I explained to you before, very few of the corpses would have dispalyed the colouration for two reasons1: a good portion of the victims would have died of suffocation rather than CO poisoning and as a result would have had no discoloration at all

2: a large number would have had some degree of anemia by virtue of the mass starvation in the various ghettos from where the victims came.

Furthermore, pink discoloration right after death (in the minority that would have displayed it) would not look remarkable at all to a casual observer, recall what I said earlier about the photo taken by Hunt (another shot in the foot on his part lol)

Finally, at least one of the witnesses (I will find the name and post an extract of the testimony before the end of today) stated that the corpses looked "living". This is a clear allusion to pinkish, healthy pigmentation.

So now you invent unsubstantiated ad hoc assumptions without any Kind of evidentiary support like, the victims either all suffered from anemia or werent poisoned with carbon monoxide at all, instead they suffocated! The Engine exhaust was inconsequential. That's unreasonable and unlikely. History is about finding out what likely happened!

By the way, if you want to argue suffocation, then you should revert to the Diesel Engine Story, because Diesel exhaust emits far less carbon monoxide. Thus, the Chance of poisoning is reduced substantially.

Your last sentence is true and that's about it. That hundreds of people forced into a small closed room will soon suffocate on their own is a fact of nature, and there is nothing as hoc about facts of nature.

This comment does not make much sense. One can't revert to diesel even if one wanted to because the evidence for the use of petrol is pretty much unassailable.

It doesn't matter though how much of what engines emit: in some situations people would have been dead before the engine was started, so the type of engine doesn't matter. To repeat: hundreds of people forced into a small hermetic room will suffocate in a matter of minutes all on their own. It's a fact.

@bhigrApparently you missed what I said:@bhigr:Please break this impasse.We could argue about corpse color and steam all day.You can prove the Holocaust is a hoax by simply proving where the Jews went after the Reinhard Camps.Surely you or some other denier can prove this?After all, coordinating the shipping of Jews wherever would leave an enormous paper trail. You need transport schedules, memos between the SS and the military coordinating their efforts, the assignment of personnel to guard these transports, the assignment of a commander or commanders of these camps or the set up of a Judenrat for ghettos.See, I've just helped you get started. Good hunting.Or, you can just admit that you have nothing and all of this arguing over steam and corpse color is just a smoke screen.Balls in your court, denier.

"This comment does not make much sense. One can't revert to diesel even if one wanted to because the evidence for the use of petrol is pretty much unassailable." The same was said about the Diesel narrative for decades. The only thing that is constant is that the story keeps changing.

Note that there were always several chambers - 3, 6, 10. Suppose the Nazis have filled chamber 1. What do you think will happen to the people in that chamber while the Nazis are filling the other 2/5/9 chambers?

@ J KellyAn interesting exercise for Holocaust deniers would to be to compare evidence for the resettlement of millions of Jews they claim in 1942 and after with the evidence for the Nisko resettlement operation involving 1000s in late 1939 and 1940

@ Sergey RomanovIt is interesting that Krzepicki wrote about "the bodies of those who had been asphyxiated in the gas chamber"; the comment is ambiguous as to his meaning but Auerbach speculated about murder in air-tight chambers without poisonous gas.

No such thing was said and nothing factual is changing: the testimonies on which the petrol claim is based are old, though admittedly - and undeservedly - less attention was paid to them. The fact remains that e.g. the testimony of a Treblinka "motorist" trumps various testimonies about diesel, whether by Jewish prisoners or by the Nazis. The testimony of the people who installed the engine in Sobibor trumps testimonies of people who didn't. And so on.

But you're trying to change the topic. Whatever you think about diesel, people would have still suffocated on their own in many situations. Deal with it.

@Sergey Romanov, agree, I just found it interesting and that Auerbach already was thinking of asphyxiation in the chambers, without the use of poison, in her 1947 piece on the camp ("a method in which no exhaust fumes would have to be used at all"), which IMO speaks to bhigr's idea that anyone here is using ad hoc reasoning.

@SMYou mean the complete mess that the Germans made, so bad that they abandoned their plans?This is also in an area that the Germans controlled. Imagine trying to do the same in the partisan infested areas of the USSR, plus the fact these were active military zones. I wonder how the Wehrmacht would react to the thought of over a million non combatants dumped in their active military zone. We can also toss in the fact that there was a severe food shortage in the area.

"So now you invent unsubstantiated ad hoc assumptions without any Kind of evidentiary support like, the victims either all suffered from anemia or werent poisoned with carbon monoxide at all, instead they suffocated! The Engine exhaust was inconsequential. That's unreasonable and unlikely. History is about finding out what likely happened!"

Hardly ad hoc. Pfannenstiel explicitly stated that victims at Belzec died from suffocation. So deal with it.

Amenia is hardly far fetched considering the conditions in the Warsaw ghetto at the time. There exists a book of reports from Jewish physicians in the ghetto in 1941 IIRC where it was stated that most ghetto residents had something like half the circulatory capacity of average people. That is more than enough to dilute and eliminate any discoloration post mortum. What I just did was using evidence of the situation to reach a logical explanation.

Furthermore, at least one witness described gassed corpses as looking "alive", a clear allusion to healthy, pinkish color.

We are very impressed by your posts in this thread. You should join SSF, (http://www.skepticforum.com/viewforum.php?f=39) a pretty awesome forum where these kinds of things are discussed at length and in detail.

bhigr wrote "This is not even controversial. You admit yourself that several witnesses talk about steaming jews to death. There's your steam story."

This needs comment. I did not "admit" that "several" of the escapees gave testimonies about "steaming jews to death" (I note in passing the intended slur in bhigr's comment).

I explained rather that more than 10x as many testimonies were given mentioning gas than steam. And that a single witness that I am aware of mentioned steam only (Gutman, an early escapee, testifying in 1947). And further that neither of the witnesses on whom Jansson focused his argument unequivocally explained Jews' deaths at Treblinka as taking place by means of steam.

For one of these, Rabinowicz, we have Seidman's detailed summary in which Rabinowicz gave Seidman an explanation never mentioning steam but only gas. The other evidence we have about what Rabinowicz said is Lewin's brief diary entry written a few weeks later that mentions steam and not gas. For the other, Krzepicki, we have one testimony (short) stating that he was unable to determine the exact means of death; in the longer of Krzepicki's testimonies he alludes to gas more often than to steam, but alludes to both.

This, explained at much greater length in the blog piece, is 1) hardly grounds to claim promotion of a "steam story" about Treblinka and 2) at variance with both Jansson's claims and bhigr's comment.

@bhigrWhy are you ignoring my comment?@bhigrApparently you missed what I said:@bhigr:Please break this impasse.We could argue about corpse color and steam all day.You can prove the Holocaust is a hoax by simply proving where the Jews went after the Reinhard Camps.Surely you or some other denier can prove this?After all, coordinating the shipping of Jews wherever would leave an enormous paper trail. You need transport schedules, memos between the SS and the military coordinating their efforts, the assignment of personnel to guard these transports, the assignment of a commander or commanders of these camps or the set up of a Judenrat for ghettos.See, I've just helped you get started. Good hunting.Or, you can just admit that you have nothing and all of this arguing over steam and corpse color is just a smoke screen.Balls in your court, denier.

Oh, you didn't understand the poem and its connection to your "argument". So be it!

You state that the SS merely suffocated the inmates. Therefore, their skin was not colored red. Nevertheless several gas chambers were built. The gas was introduced into the gas chamber for no particular reason whatsoever, since the inmates didn't die from gas poisoning. I consider this story to be absurd and you stopped reasoning from this point on! ;-)

Please break this impasse.We could argue about corpse color and steam all day.You can prove the Holocaust is a hoax by simply proving where the Jews went after the Reinhard Camps.Surely you or some other denier can prove this?After all, coordinating the shipping of Jews wherever would leave an enormous paper trail. You need transport schedules, memos between the SS and the military coordinating their efforts, the assignment of personnel to guard these transports, the assignment of a commander or commanders of these camps or the set up of a Judenrat for ghettos.See, I've just helped you get started. Good hunting.Or, you can just admit that you have nothing and all of this arguing over steam and corpse color is just a smoke screen.Balls in your court, denier.

Nope. The only way to prove the "hoax" is to show that these people weren't murdered and in fact "resettled" in accordance with the coded language used in incriminating documents and according to the theories cited by deniers smarter than your lame ass self. Sorry, but the overwhelming convergence of evidence far outweighs your isolated nitpicking. The actual policies pursued by the victors of the war (e.g. Dr. Harrison citing how the Americans protected Germans who helped with securing the German surrender in Italy, or the Soviets burying incriminating documents and going after journalists like Vassily Grossman) rule out the twin excuses of forgery and coercion. It's over. The Holocaust happened, and no one faked it. Your only chance is to prove "Ressetlement".

If there were indeed a "hoax", the alleged hoaxsters would've had their "actors" follow a single script, to avoid any inconsistencies. This has been observed in an actual hoax: the malmedy massacre trial. The German defence attorneys actually coached the defendants, which is why all their phoney accounts about being tortured all lined. up down to the last detail. It is only when people are being coached or led when their statements or observations line up in the exact way this idiot demands. They are being made to read from the same script after all.No. The so called "contradiction" increases the reliability, rather than decreases it. That means that these people are describing what they saw on their own, without any outside influence.

And, how do we even know that Pfannenstiel's and the other guy's testimony are "at the same time"? I.e. talking about the exact same event? Pfannenstiel said this while witnessing a gassing with Kurt Gerstein at Belzec, IIRC. Sergey mentioned a Soviet witness for gas vans, maybe Jeff can tell us where this other guy is from.

Bhigr's an idiot. A desperate idiot clinging to a desperate, flailing ideology. Pathetic.

For fucks sake, your an illiterate moron. Let me repeat, the official cover story was "resettlement". Deniers smarter than yourself insist on a "literalist" reading and that Jews were "literally" resettled. Therefore, prove resettlement.Illiterate piece of shit.

"Oh, you didn't understand the poem and its connection to your "argument". So be it!"

Actually I understood that you have nothing else to say so you posted an unrelated poem. The argument is still unadressed.

"You state that the SS merely suffocated the inmates. Therefore, their skin was not colored red."

I haven't stated anything like that. Which means you haven't even understood what I was writing all the time. Even though I was writing in a very clear language, "slowly, just for you" ;)

Nathan, for example, is neither a denier, nor an idiot, so, unlike you, he had no trouble at all grasping what I wrote and his explanation is correct (albeit I wrote the exact same thing so had you not been such a silly puppy, you wouldn't have wasted all this time and addressed the issues days ago already).

"Then why did anyone bother to introduce poison gas at all?"

Well, if you took time (10 secs or so) to actually think about it:

1. Self-suffocation would work in a sufficiently short time only with large groups of people, whereas the Nazis had to work with *any* groups, large or small. If a transport of 80 comes instead of 1000, it still has to be killed.2. Self-suffocation is a probabilistic process even with larger groups - you never know if a couple of people among the hundreds survive after all and then make trouble during the unloading. So you make *sure*.3. Since the BST personnel came from the euthanasia institutions, they just overtook the basic Nazi euthanasia procedure, which was making people lethally asleep with CO. That way the Nazis had an illusion they were not cold-blooded murderers. Of course, after a few transports of a few thousands it would have been a hard illusion to maintain, but we're talking about how it all started.

"If the official documents state "resettlement", then this is a documentary proof. Thank's for this admission."

It is indeed documentary evidence - of deportation. But since we also know that although these people had been deported, they weren't resettled, and that they simply disappeared, logically, then, they were murdered by the "resettlers".

when the advancing Soviet army exposed Hitler's unique Jewish genocide, Kruschev, the Ukrainian Boss, resisted any special treatment for Jews staggering home from the death camps. He even refused to return their homes.

Mikhoels complained to Molotov that 'after the Jewish catastrophe, the local authorities pay no attention'......Stalin had decreed that All Soviet citizens suffered equally

Montefiore, Court of the Red Czar, pp 559 to 560.

Simply put, there was no hoax. All the documents that fell into Soviet hands, like the Jager report and the Auschwitz construction documents are 100% authentic, simply because the Soviets had no motive and didn't have any policy to "forge" them in the first place. Your hoax never happened, it exists only in your mind.

@ Sergey, so what is the reason that they used poison gas at all? "they just overtook the basic Nazi euthanasia procedure,? So they didn't know what they were doing? Aha, months and years of experience but still complete morons. Strange, don't you think so?

"Self-suffocation is a probabilistic process even with larger groups..." That's also true for gassing. Some people survive longer than others.

"1. Self-suffocation would work in a sufficiently short time only with large groups of people, " The SS could wait for the next large load of prisoners to come before filling up the chamber and large numbers were incessantly brought there. So small numbers are of no concern.

The Soviets indeed tried many times to hide the Jewish character of the genocide, preferring to speak of "peaceful Soviet citizens" and the like. E.g. the draft note about Babiy Yar does clearly tell about the shooting of the Kievan Jews, but it was corrected to faceless "peaceful Soviet citizens". Even in the Soviet Auschwitz report the word "Jew" is mentioned one time, while identifying one of the many witnesses. Which is why Carlos Porter is such an idiot: had "Russia" hoaxed the Nazi genocide, it would have been all about ethnic Russians and other Slavs first, everyone else second.

Actually, since these "resettlement specialists" came from the euthanasia institutions (why is that, I wonder), they did know very well how to kill. Though they had never had to kill on such a scale before. Anyway, I'm not sure what is the point you're trying to make.

"That's also true for gassing. Some people survive longer than others."

And the time for "making sure" is shortened significantly.

"The SS could wait for the next large load of prisoners to come before filling up the chamber and large numbers were incessantly brought there. So small numbers are of no concern."

And why would they wait for an uncertain transport if they could simply gas them? See, you're not thinking practically. The method was both efficient and universal.

If this were true, then your back to the red corpses problem, because they would have died fo CO-poisoning.

"And why would they wait for an uncertain transport if they could simply gas them?" Because the next transport was not uncertain and the process is much simpler, safer and cost effective. You know those efficient Germans? But, thinking is not your strenght is it?

See, it's just an engine with a bunch of pipes. We're not exactly talking Rube Goldberg machinery here. I would have understood if it were about some expensive/intricate stuff. We're talking about widely available devices here. The "debate" is not worth even a minute spending on it. But deniers wouldn't be deniers...

Yes, Mars. We've already established this with the HD-saving UFO hypothesis. I mean, we know they were deported, and we know they weren't resettled, so either they were murdered or they were taken by aliens into the outer space.

They must've been deported to outer space, then. No way in hell would they've been deported "to the east" simply because there wasn't any "east" left for them to be deported to. And there's no evidence that they arrived "east" to begin with.

"Of course we do. They have never been found, so they had never been resettled." You didn't find someone so he must have been killed? More of your logic! Hihihihi This is great stuff man, really hilarious! More more more...

What I'm thinking is that if you say that they went somewhere else you have to PROVE they went somewhere else.Dear.I feel weird typing that.See, bhigr, when I bring this up to deniers the reply I get ranges from "I don't have to prove anything" to your, "well, they went somewhere else."You don't believe the killing method works. Ok. Then, we have an impasse because we do.Our beliefs are backed by the history, mainly that these Jews went to these camps and never came out. Eyewitness accounts of inmates, perpetrators and bystanders converge on the killing method. We also have the reports of the investigations completed by the Poles at the end of the war.You and other deniers say that none of this happened.OK. Now it is incumbent on you to prove otherwise.If these were transit camps, where did the Jews go?Answer that question and you go from being "deniers" to actual "revisionists."See, not hard.Balls back in your court.

I know that if you resettle millions of people, you either still find them afterwards or they have died before you found them. They were never found, so a) they either died in the extermination camps (as *all* the evidence indicates), or b) they died in the Nazi resettlement camps in the East - for which there is *zero* evidence, against which there are mountains if evidence, and, best of all, this would still amount to the Nazis murdering them - though by other means than gas, probably slower, more cruel means. So basically that's what denial of extermination camps leads to. Still no way out of the genocide.

@bhigr:Answer my comment:What I'm thinking is that if you say that they went somewhere else you have to PROVE they went somewhere else.Dear.I feel weird typing that.See, bhigr, when I bring this up to deniers the reply I get ranges from "I don't have to prove anything" to your, "well, they went somewhere else."You don't believe the killing method works. Ok. Then, we have an impasse because we do.Our beliefs are backed by the history, mainly that these Jews went to these camps and never came out. Eyewitness accounts of inmates, perpetrators and bystanders converge on the killing method. We also have the reports of the investigations completed by the Poles at the end of the war.You and other deniers say that none of this happened.OK. Now it is incumbent on you to prove otherwise.If these were transit camps, where did the Jews go?Answer that question and you go from being "deniers" to actual "revisionists."See, not hard.Balls back in your court.

So, dumbass Bhigr tries to sound smart and yet still can't prove that the Jews whom he desperately wants to believe were resettled were actually resettled. Pathetic.Give Jkelly what he wants. You insist that the Jews were resettled? prove it. Mattogno'd be proud.

"for which there is *zero* evidence" A few lines before you admitted that there is documentary evidence. You keep contradicting yourself.

"I know that if you resettle millions of people, you either still find them afterwards or they have died before you found them."

Oh, they may have chosen to move someplace else. They may have been deported by Stalin. They may have been killed in combat. They may have committed suicide. They may have died in an air raid. The may have starved. They may have been moved to other concentration camps....

Yeah, because the Nazis would have allowed them free movement. Uh huh. But they would still be around in that case, and we know they aren't, because they're still missing.

"They may have been deported by Stalin."

Since they never were found in the first place, they couldn't have been deported by Stalin or anyone else. But even had they been deported, they would still have been around, and we know they aren't, because they're still missing.

"They may have been killed in combat."

Some could have been, but you have to explain all.

"They may have committed suicide."

Some could have, but you have to explain all.

"They may have died in an air raid."

See "combat" above.

"The may have starved."

Some could have, and it amounts to murder on the Nazis' part, but you have to explain all.

"They may have been moved to other concentration camps"

We have a good idea about the moves between concentration camps, and those of those Jews who were not murdered by the Nazis one way or another survived to tell the tale. Which hasn't happened to the "resettled" Jews.

I see a lot of "mays."So, in other words, you have nothing to prove your transit camp theory.Isn't that what upsets you, bhigr? The "maybes?"I'm not talking about random Jews, bhigr. I'm talking about a minimum of 1.2 million Jews, many of them women, children and the elderly sent into active war zones or areas where a vicious partisan war was waging. I'm talking about areas subject to an artificial famine created by the Germans taking most of the food supplies.You are failing to deal with a very specific historical timeline, as well failing to deal with the realistic conditions in the areas these Jews were allegedly sent to.Again, where is your PROOF?

"I'm talking about areas subject to an artificial famine created by the Germans taking most of the food supplies." Really? Why didn't you mention Stalin's policy of scarched earth, the main reason for the famine in these areas? Stalin directly killed his own citizens in order to win the war.

Oh, they may have chosen to move someplace else. They may have been deported by Stalin. They may have been killed in combat. They may have committed suicide. They may have died in an air raid. The may have starved. They may have been moved to other concentration camps....

Except all of this rubbish contradicts what other Deniers smarter than Bhigr insist happened to the Jews, according to their "literalist" interpretation - that they were resettled to the east. Bhigr complained earlier about how the "story keeps changing", but based on this latest blathering, His is the only story that keeps changing. I guess this can be seen as an admission that the "resettled to the east" theory is completely bogus.

That's why they're called, "deniers": they don't advance a narrative or a positive claim. They just nitpick and ignore the truth. Pathetic.

I'm not ducking kelly. I told you that you can prove a thing in many different ways. I don't have to prove it your way. That's an unreasonable demand.

The only thing you can demand is proof. The first part is the criticism of "eye witnesses". That's what I've done. Since you could hardly defend any testimony on rational grounds. You say it happened. You have the irrefutable testimony. Present it to me.

"Since you agree that all the things I mentioned could have happened Sergey, your "logical" inference that they must have been killed is wrong. I hope this is clear to you by now."

None of the things you have listed, whether individually, or in aggregate, explain *all* the missing Jews, as I have already pointed out. Which is I why I wrote that we know that the Jews were not resettled: resettled -> found; the Jews were not found. They're still missing. They disappeared somewhere between the deportation point and the end point of the "resettlement" (in which they never arrived). So historians, knowing this, ask a simple question: what happened to them? All the available evidence says: they were murdered one way or another, mostly in the extermination camps. No alternative evidence-based explanation of their fate exists.

"what happened to them?" Oh many different things may have happened. Unfortunately, this is a red herring. We are talking about you theory that they were killed. "the Jews were not found. They're still missing. " So what? Many people were not found That's no proof that they were killed.

Actually, what's unreasonable is insisting that something happened without presenting any evidence that it did. The only person who has done that in this whole thread was Bhigr. Lots of assertions and mays, not a single shred of evidence to back it up.

"Actually, what's unreasonable is insisting that something happened without presenting any evidence that it did.." Well, then present to me the evidence for the killings in Treblinka. Show me the corpses. Show me the murder weapon, the finger prints... You know, this is how its done by the police.

"That's completely irrational. Just because you don't find someone doesn't mean he was killed."

You can only continue by presenting strawman version of the argument. We are not talking about one person. We are talking about millions of people. Who had been deported by have never been found. Millions of people don't vanish en masse from this Earth in an extremely short period of time without having been killed.

Sorry. I'll concede on your point about Stalin's scorched earth policy.What about the German scorched earth policy when they retreated? Are you saying that the Germans didn't take most of the food supplies?

@bihgr:"I'm not ducking kelly. I told you that you can prove a thing in many different ways. I don't have to prove it your way. That's an unreasonable demand."

It's perfectly reasonable.I want proof that these were transit camps. Since you are insisting that they are you need to provide proof.The fact that you can't says a great deal.

"The only thing you can demand is proof. The first part is the criticism of "eye witnesses". That's what I've done. Since you could hardly defend any testimony on rational grounds. You say it happened. You have the irrefutable testimony. Present it to me."

What SM has done is show how testimony evolves over time. The eyewitnesses agree that the Jews died in the camps, the confusion is over the method. This is understandable.What you are doing is honing in on understandable confusion. Now, break this impasse. I want your proof that these camps were transit camps. Not "mays, " not "perhaps Stalin deported these Jews," I want your proof.It doesn't have to be your proof, it can be some other deniers proof.Or, you can admit you have nothing.

Oh that's your convoluted response to "Mattogno, Graf and Kues". Sorry, but I gave up after several attempts. Let me just look at your response to the coloring problem.

You cite a study, in which 28 victim of CO-poisoning did not show cherry red skin coloring. However, of those 28 only 13 had not been decomposing. Since the victims weren't left to decompose but were immediately burried, you can rule that out. That leaves us with 13 out of 94 showing such a coloration. Thus anyone looking at a pile of hundreds of corpses should see this skin color.

The residual corpses must have suffered from anemia or they suffocated and weren't really poisoned. The latter argument is what Sergey is trying to tell us - contrary to what his study is arguing for. Again, the story is being shifted.

@bhigr:Please reply:@bihgr:"I'm not ducking kelly. I told you that you can prove a thing in many different ways. I don't have to prove it your way. That's an unreasonable demand."

It's perfectly reasonable.I want proof that these were transit camps. Since you are insisting that they are you need to provide proof.The fact that you can't says a great deal.

"The only thing you can demand is proof. The first part is the criticism of "eye witnesses". That's what I've done. Since you could hardly defend any testimony on rational grounds. You say it happened. You have the irrefutable testimony. Present it to me."

What SM has done is show how testimony evolves over time. The eyewitnesses agree that the Jews died in the camps, the confusion is over the method. This is understandable.What you are doing is honing in on understandable confusion. Now, break this impasse. I want your proof that these camps were transit camps. Not "mays, " not "perhaps Stalin deported these Jews," I want your proof.It doesn't have to be your proof, it can be some other deniers proof.Or, you can admit you have nothing.

"Really? Why didn't you mention Stalin's policy of scarched earth, the main reason for the famine in these areas? Stalin directly killed his own citizens in order to win the war."

Really? The major cause of the famine was in fact the implementation of German hunger policies that had in mind the reduction of undesirable populations. The Hunger plan was devised in the winter of 1940-41, long before Stalin ordered a scorched earth policy.

"Oh, they may have chosen to move someplace else. They may have been deported by Stalin. They may have been killed in combat. They may have committed suicide. They may have died in an air raid. The may have starved. They may have been moved to other concentration camps...."

That is quite possibly the most idiotic denier ad hoc explanation I have ever seen in my life.

"The residual corpses must have suffered from anemia or they suffocated and weren't really poisoned. The latter argument is what Sergey is trying to tell us - contrary to what his study is arguing for. Again, the story is being shifted."

Ok I'm gonna break it down for you real nice and simple.

1. As many as half of the deportees would have suffered from anemia

2. suffocation would have killed some rather than the gas

3. red liviity does not become apparent until several hours after death, by which point they were buried.

4. pink discoloration was noticed by at least one witness, but would have been difficult to notice for most given the conditions and would have been present in a minority of victims.

There. If you can't understand something as simple as that then you have no fucking hope.

Re: the matter of testimonies. There are basically no 100% accurate testimonies (worthy of the name) due to how both human memory and human speech work. There will always be some inaccuracies, so it doesn't make sense to speak of "truthful" testimonies in the denier sense - because deniers want absolute accuracy (which is why bhigr equated an irrefutable testimony with the truth itself!). The moment a denier admits that a testimony can be partially inaccurate *and* truthful at the same time is the moment one large pillar of HD crumbles.

Yes it has, for most of the thread. You've lost and couldn't address the arguments. Some people would suffocate, some people would get poisoned and you don't know how many of this and how many of that.

The White Paper also deals with the transit camp issue. I see you haven't mentioned that part because you have nothing to rebut the conclusions reached in the White Paper.I want you to say "I have no proof that these were transit camps."

No my dear! You don't Win an Argument by claiming Victory. 90% of the time Red Coloration occurs. You claim the victims werentgoing poisoned without any proof. Others claim the victims were anemic, without any proof...

Of course I don't, I've won it by refuting your silliness and all you could do is quote poems and one-liner slogans, so you've lost.

"You claim the victims werentgoing poisoned without any proof"

Not true, see comment at http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.de/2016/05/the-revisionist-fabrication-of-myth-of_26.html?showComment=1464637469809#c7955248834826216205

Simple question: how many people in the chambers would have been poisoned by CO and how many would have been poisoned by CO2? Don't forget to cite the evidence for your numbers. Without your numbers any of your cherry-red discoloration stats are completely menaningless.

Absolutely! That's how we know what happened to the Jews: we know they were deported and we know they weren't resettled, so we know they were murdered. And we have mountains of evidence to establish where and how. That's how history works.

Simple question: how many people in the chambers would have been poisoned by CO and how many would have been poisoned by CO2? Don't forget to cite the evidence for your numbers. Without these numbers any of your cherry-red discoloration stats are completely meaningless.

PS: there are testimonies about people who actually simply suffocated, like the unimpeachable testimony of Dr. Pfannenstiel. So it's not only an obvious scientific fact, it's also supported by testimonial evidence.

"Serge it is incompatible with gassing and you know it! There no need to Gas People if they all suffocate."

Red herring. You're of course wrong, as I have explained at length above, but even that's not the point. You're talking about why one would introduce the engine, and that's a separate topic (fully addressed above). Our topic is how many would have suffocated regardless of whether the engine was reasonable or not (which it of course was).

So: on the assumption that there was a (petrol) engine, and taking the average gas chamber measurements from testimonies, how many people in the chambers would have been poisoned by CO and how many would have been poisoned by CO2? Don't forget to cite the evidence for your numbers. Without these numbers any of your cherry-red discoloration stats are completely meaningless.